


Kings of the Wild Frontier - Part Six

by wordbyrdaber



Series: Kings of the Wild Frontier [5]
Category: Django Unchained (2012)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:19:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbyrdaber/pseuds/wordbyrdaber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tying of loose ends. </p><p> </p><p>The end may break your hearts just a little...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kings of the Wild Frontier - Part Six

**Author's Note:**

> Again, it's Tarantino world and King as well as Django belong to him.   
> I'm just playing here for a bit, and it's been a lovely time. 
> 
> Also, I'm sorry I haven't updated in more than a month. I've been in the middle of moving halfway across the country. This is the first week I've had a chance to sit down and concentrate on recreational writing bits. 
> 
> As always, I love your advice and comments.

Kings of the Wild Frontier – Part Six

Cincinnati, OH - December, 1853  
Cold wind and snow licked at the wooden floorboards of the small schoolhouse. Despite the coal-burning stove in the middle of the room, the students had to take a break from their studies regularly and move around – or everyone would surely freeze. Paula was secretly glad that winter had finally come. In the summer and even into the fall, the stump of a limb at her side had shown. People had stared, and she’d been even more self-conscious than usual. But now – now she could cover her upper body with good, thick woolen shawls. It was a small respite from the curious reputation she was forming in the neighborhood as the single-handed school teacher.  
Teaching had been the obvious choice in terms of employment – she was a well-educated young woman, and had managed to pass the Ohio state board examinations easily enough. It was work suited to spinsters, young single girls, and widows. As far as Paula Schultz was concerned, she was a kind of widow. She’d heard women call themselves California widows – in reference to husbands who had left home and hearth for the promise of riches, and the gold rush out west. She was a bounty hunter’s widow – she’d been shuffled off so that the doctor would not have to worry about her safety. This was understandable, but lonesomeness for King had been replaced with a spark of what she now knew was anger.   
“They all think they know what’s best for us, Little Sister,” Nattie had told her on the morning she’d received and read King’s letter to her. She’d sobbed into her friend’s shoulder as the older woman tried to comfort her.  
“The truth is that they’s can’t imagine a world where we know what to do with ourselves, even though we often seem to figure it out jus’ fine.”   
So the widows Stoddard & Schultz presided over children in the small school just west of the river. It was ironic to think, really, that two women with such checkered pasts would choose such a profession. In Paula’s mind, it was not inappropriate in the least bit – who better to teach pupils about life than women who had lived it?  
Sarah had already been working in the school, and was happy to ask the education board if she could hire an assistant teacher. The size of the class had nearly doubled within the past six months. Most of the pupils came from middleclass immigrant families who were employed by various businesses in the city. At least a dozen of Paula’s students had German parents, which worked to her advantage. When they found out that Paula spoke a bit of the language, they were usually overjoyed. It made her more accessible to the people she served.   
Her hair was also coming back in, thicker and more abundant than it had been. It had grown out to the point that the pins and caps she wore stayed in place, and at night when she brushed it out, it glowed like bright warm amber in the candlelight.   
On this particular Thursday afternoon, Sarah was giving a lesson about long division to the fourth graders. Paula was lecturing on English pronouns, but all minds were wandering towards the impending Christmas holiday.  
“What do pronouns do, children?” Paula asked her students from the other corner of the room. It was a challenge to teach different groups of children at the same time in one large room where everything echoed.   
“THEY are dull!” one of the younger boys called out, causing a few of his cohorts to giggle.   
Paula smiled, raised an indulgent eyebrow, and put her hand on her hip.  
“Oh, Charles, you wit! Fine, but what do they do? Irena?”  
“Yes, ma’am – they…replace words. In sentences.”  
“How so? With what?”  
“If you have a name in a sentence,” continued the young girl.   
“- you can use a “him” or “her” in place of a person’s name.”  
“Right. Good. Wunderbar! ”  
A few of the students giggled and her exaggeration.   
Paula nodded, pleased with the reaction.   
“Shall we write some examples on our slates?”  
She turned around, and started scrawling sentences on the large blackboard that covered an entire length of the schoolroom wall.   
“Margaret has a horse. HER horse is named Fritz.”  
It was suddenly colder in the room. Why was it colder? Paula looked uneasily towards the windows she hoped were keeping the majority of the wind out, but kept going nevertheless.   
“Jonah has a book. HE loves to read. Sally and Irena tell secrets. THEY are confidants…”  
“King is a silly old man,”  
A familiar voice shot its way inside the school from the front door.  
“HE has come to see his wife.”  
The young woman stopped dead in the middle of writing the last sentence, turned and concentrated with some difficulty on not dropping the chalk she held between her fingers. The room went eerily still, and all the children turned to the front entrance, beholding a bearded man in a large gray fur coat with a matching gray bowler hat.   
“Saint Nicholas!” one of the children exclaimed happily and a ripple of wonder exploded through the rows of students.   
Paula cleared her throat, trying madly to maintain her composure as the room spun.   
“Ah! Have you all been good this year?” Schultz crowed to a resounding chorus of clapping and high-pitched voices.   
“Children,” Sarah interrupted curtly, shooting a withering look of disapproval at the doctor. “I think that perhaps Miss Paula should see why Saint Nick has come so early…or at all? She’ll need to step outside for a bit. Why don’t we take out our slates, and practice some spelling words?”   
Clearing her throat, Paula pulled her wool shawl a little tighter around herself, stepping across the room & outside into the cold air while King held open the door.   
Irena turned to her desk partner smugly.  
“My mother said that she didn’t think Miss Paula was really a widow…” 

 

Paula settled herself against the hand railing, just a few steps outside the school house. Snow was falling from the sky, and the same stiff winter breeze that had cut through the building refused to stop gusting around the roads and buildings it encountered. Schultz stood across from her. He carried lots of vibrato – but there was fear behind his smile. She looked into his face, reminding herself of its details.   
Same nose that was punctuated gently at the tip – a nose that would look slightly bulbous on anyone else.   
Same eyes.   
Same brown hair streaked with salt-and-pepper locks…though he seemed to have grown it out a bit for winter. And, of course, there was the remarkable beard. Most men she knew kept clean-shaven, but not King.   
“Well, here you are,” she muttered, covering her truncated wrist more securely with the shawl.  
“You haven’t thrown anything yet. This is a good start.”  
“Better than you deserve.”  
He flinched at that, and as soon as she’d spoken, she was sorry. She softened, biting her lip.  
“Thank you for the beautiful books. They…helped.”  
Schultz nodded, raising a cautious brow.   
“I knew of no better salve.”  
“What are you doing here?”  
“There is a gathering in the city – former political allies. I have been summoned here by friends of old.”  
“I wondered…I wondered…”   
Paula did not want to know what a summoning of someone with King’s particular talents entailed. If she was honest with herself – and she often was -she already knew the answer to the unspoken query.   
The afternoon was overcast and dark with only dank blue light coming from the sky – it reflected the news she’d heard about Cardinal Badini’s visit to the city. He wasn’t a popular man, especially with the German revolutionaries who lived in the neighborhood “over the Rhine” and across one of the major bridges in the city. The strife felt too familiar somehow, and Paula had to work hard in order to keep from being distracted by the political fuss.   
She knew just enough German to make out the unfavorable headlines in the Freeman’s Hochwächter, a newspaper written entirely in Deutsch. She hadn’t been able to keep from noticing the printed warnings about the impending visit of the "Butcher of Bologna" – thankfully, between grading and preparing lessons for the children, she’d only had a few moments in which to wonder about any connections she might have to the protesters.  
“I thought that it was…appropriate,” King explained, leveling her with a serious gaze. “- corresponding events leading me back here, to the journey I never got to complete with you. I admit now that I believe the universe was telling me that I’d been stupid to…”  
“To not trust me?” she returned. “To not have a conversation with me about where we stood before riding off like that?”  
The door to the schoolhouse opened, and Sarah stepped outside.  
“Is everything alright?” she asked Paula.   
“I’m fine – I’ll be back in just a moment.”  
The widow Stoddard nodded, and then fixed King with a glare before turning, heading back indoors.   
“She has always frightened me,” King breathed.  
“It’s no wonder – you don’t want to make an enemy of our Sarah,” Paula returned with a smile.  
“Have I made an enemy out of you?”  
The woman regarded Schultz for a moment.  
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”  
He nodded, taking her left hand in his.  
“Let me come to see you at your residence this evening…please. If you turn me out, I will accept it – but let me speak my peace, Schatz. That’s all I ask.”   
There was a long pause. Paula stared gloomily up at the doctor. He was being quite brave – again, his ability to carry a cool demeanor was enviable. However, Paula saw the lines around his eyes had deepened since last she’d seen him. New shadows clung to his face. She didn’t doubt that he really hadn’t been sleeping, as his last letter to her had suggested.   
“That’ll be fine – recht sein,” she nodded.   
“Then I have things to do – Auf Wiedersehen.”  
He tipped his hat while kissing her knuckles, then strolled down the schoolhouse steps - into the street and snow. 

 

Even though Paula was not certain that she wanted King to grace them with his presence that evening, she begged Sarah to help with her hair. She’d learned to do it with her left hand by now, but she wanted to look as stately as she could, and that meant not having a single strand out of place.  
Nattie had been none too pleased at the prospect of having the doctor over at the house, but she reluctantly agreed to set another place at the monstrous dining table. It was nearly a magical table, and always seemed to have enough room - no matter how many people sat around it. Her brother Thomas had put two and two together as had his sons and daughters. Everyone was eager to see the man who had sent the beautiful books to Miss Paula so many months ago. As for Schultz’s political leanings, Thomas made it very clear he didn’t want his family getting caught up in it.   
“Don’ you worry - if he starts any nonsense, I’ll lay ‘im out,” Nattie had assured him.   
Paula had overheard the conversation, smiling to herself. There was no doubt in her mind that King was a deadly force to be reckoned with, but it seemed that her “husband” had more than Sarah to fear. King had always spoken of them with some reverence – she’d never been certain if it was simply part of his moral code regarding women, or a true regard. However, it was good to know that he respected them.   
She almost expected him not to come – thought perhaps the events of that afternoon had been a dream. Paula really had dreamed of Schultz since they’d parted ways, and the effects of these nocturnal visions were always bittersweet and sad. She’d wake, remember he was gone, and fight off the tears all over again. It was just in the last month or so that she’d steeled herself to the resignation that she’d probably never see the good doctor again.   
Candle light bathed her small half-attic room, and she paced the floor as twilight gave way to darkness. She listened to the sounds of life from the family she’d come to understand as familiar and calming; Thomas’ children were talking loudly downstairs. Sarah and Nattie were in the kitchen finishing up dinner. The echoes of people’s voices in the house along with the jarring of floorboards and footsteps had an overall grounding effect. It lulled her into security.  
And then there was cheerful knocking from the front of the house.   
Paula took a deep breath, and listened. She heard Thomas open the door, and the congenial exchanges of the two men. There were loud adulations from the children, and Nattie’s voice rising just a bit with a terse, “They’ll spoil their supper!”   
She shook her head, smiling. Of course. He didn’t eat sugar himself as a general rule, but had brought it to the children. If he’d still been a dentist, she’d have had to chide him for making sure of potential customers. Gathering her courage, and settling the shake in her bones, Paula proceeded down the stairs. 

 

“Taffy and oranges? For a man of your profession, you’ve got a surprisingly soft side,” Sarah muttered, grinning at Schultz. The doctor made an odd sound in the back of his throat that finally echoed out of his mouth, half pronouncement and half laughter. He removed his hat in a salutatory way before setting it down on a nearby chair, all the while grinning into the widow’s face.  
“I’ve been über dem Rhein – Chriskindlmark, ja? I couldn’t come visiting empty handed,” he disclosed, leaning a bit closer to the widow’s ear.   
“Frau Stoddard, I think we got off on the wrong boot…and I’m afraid I haven’t helped things by…” he could not bring himself to finish the sentence, and instead made a circular motion with his hand.   
Sarah nodded, biting back the urge to correct the slightly altered aphorism. Instead of chuckling, she made up her mind to set her face into a mask of serious countenance. “Dr. Schultz, I can’t deny that I’ve been angry with you. Furious, actually. But I know…I know that no one can plan for the things that happen. The feelings that happen when you meet someone that – really knows you.”  
She lifted her eyes, and they fell thoughtfully on Nattie who was frantically collecting the paper-wrapped taffy from the children - while simultaneously convincing them they’d get their sweets back after they ate a proper supper. For a moment, Schultz didn’t know how to respond, then it was if something clicked and he smiled softly to himself.   
“Anyway, I do believe you tried to protect her – would have taken that bullet for her, if you could’ve. I don’t like that you left afterwards, but you did wait to make certain she was going to live. You left an explanation, and I can understand why you went.”  
Sarah shot her eyes back at Schultz’ face, growing stern.   
“She was torn up somethin’ awful, Doctor. If you do it again, I’ll make sure you don’t show back up again so’s she can heal for good. It won’t do for you to pop in and out with nary a warning. You won’t hang up your guns, and I expect she doesn’t want you to…but don’t treat her mean, or I’ll find a way to end you - so help me, I will.”   
“I would expect nothing less,” he agreed, letting her words settle in the air around them.   
There was no time to say anything else, because Nattie’s voice echoed above the chaos in greeting.  
“Well, don’t you clean up nice, Little Sister!”  
Schultz looked upwards to the steps, and grinned brightly. Ah, but she was a beautiful sight to eyes that thought that they’d never behold her again. Paula’s hair was growing back out, and was finally just past her shoulders, the sides pulled up in clever knots by sky blue ribbon. It shone copper bright – bright light against summer blue.   
The sleeves of Paula’s simple dress were long, and she wore a cream-colored lace shawl around her straight strong shoulders. He frowned slightly, realizing the woman was hiding her right arm under the accessory. She should never have to hide – there had been enough of that.   
The familiar blush that he’d always teased her about was forming in her face. In the summer, she’d at least had a glow imparted by all the sunlight. In winter, she was ghostly white, which made the blood rush to her cheeks more noticeable.   
“Thank you, Nattie. I see our guest has arrived?”  
For a moment, everyone stood in awkward silence while King and Paula regarded each other with shining eyes. Thomas was the first to clear his throat, and say something about how good supper smelled. Sarah followed his lead, and herded everyone into the kitchen – except for the two people near the stairs. Once they were relatively alone, Paula shook her head.  
“You old romantic – you’re tearing up.”  
“Older,” he corrected, gently. “I’m older.”  
Schultz raised one eyebrow thoughtfully, and motioned for her to descend the rest of the stairs. Paula calmly walked to his side. With a mischievous grin followed by a theatrical flourish, the doctor opened his jacked to reveal an oblong green box tied up with red ribbon.  
“This – is for you. An early holiday gift, if you like,” he said, gently handing her the box.  
Hesitantly, she looked to Schultz, taking the gift with her left hand.  
“I…I need some help…”  
“Ah, right. Here, I’ll hold it…you open it.”   
They switched, and she braced the box against the rough edge of the doctor’s palm. She deftly undid the ribbon with her hand, then edged up the box lid with her fingertips. Placing her fingers into the box, she hoped to draw whatever lay within out, and then….she felt cool steel.  
A familiar weight.   
Paula nudged the box lid completely off, letting it fall to the floor with the ribbon. She held an ivory-handled pocket pistol between her fingers. The phantom hand she missed so dearly began to itch, her mind making preparations that her body could not. It was one of the most beautiful pieces she’d ever seen, and all she could do was gape at it unwittingly.  
“But…I lost my shooting hand,” she finally managed.  
“Ah! But you have another, do you not, Schatz? You see, this weapon is made for a left-handed shooter.”  
There was silence as Paula inspected the gun. The doctor began to shift uneasily, thinking that perhaps his gift was a major misstep. Schultz cleared his throat, motioning to her as he continued his explanation.  
“You have such talent – I did not want it taken from you. Your father’s gun is gone, but I thought I might replace it. And I thought I might help you learn to use it.”  
He gently picked it up, holding it to the light for her inspection.  
“I commissioned this one especially for you - the loading gate, it is on the right, and that will make it easier for a paw of the south to use, d’you see? And…and it is really all about what eye you aim with anyway, and there are tricks…”  
He looked fearfully into the woman’s face, trying to keep his spirits buoyed. She was biting her lip, then the right corner of her mouth turned upwards. Her apprehension seemed to crack.  
“Paula?” he asked, unsure of what to do next. She met his eyes again, and took the Colt with a gracious nod.   
“South paw, King. I’m a south paw now.” she breathed.   
There was a beat more, while she held the gun between them, opening the gate, then closing it deftly again with her thumb. Raising one eyebrow, she looked to Schultz.   
“I was afraid you left because…because of my…”  
“Because of your hand? Ach! You know better than that.”   
As if to emphasize his point, Schultz grabbed the woman around her waist and drew her close to him until they were nose to nose.   
“And I’ve been so angry at myself,” he continued, “because, though I want to keep you out of danger – want you as far away from my work as you can be – I was an idiot to think I could stay away.”  
Despite herself and her shaking legs, Paula managed to cross the half-an-inch between their lips. She kissed the doctor, and thought that besides smelling the cold of the city he’d brought into the house with him, she could detect (just barely) the smell of gunpowder and metal.   
There was the sound of Nattie clearing her throat across the room, and reluctantly, the Schultz’ broke away from one another, heading reluctantly towards the kitchen table – grinning like mischievous children. 

 

He did not leave till the end of February.  
Christmas and January passed languidly – as if the world had finally frozen to the point where time ceased to move. This was a blessing, and the woman did all she could to savor the days.   
It was all she could do to live through the nights.   
She had always considered herself to have a tenuous grip on morality. For so long, Paula had merely done what she needed to for survival’s sake. Those who knew her secrets called her strong, and others – like Nattie’s brother, Thomas – regarded her with a kind of horrified fascination. She was the woman who had killed her first husband. She was expected to be jaded…as was the doctor who traded the dead for monetary rewards. But – in the privacy of the room King had rented, they were coy, new things. The first time – in Kentucky – there had been a breaking point, and what had followed was a fury. In the quiet of winter nights, after shooting lessons, grading, and the occasional customer with an impacted tooth, they traced and learned each other’s skin. Paula memorized the text, committing all the best landmarks to memory like spots on a map. There was always gentle shyness at first, and then a near violent hunger that left her howling – sometimes screaming – into the sheets.   
Paula recalled her mother, long ago, speaking to the untrustworthy nature of dentists.  
“They’re a bit unhinged,” she’d said, trodding through a narrow walkway in Merchant’s Row one afternoon.  
“They don’t mind inflicting a good bit of pain. Some might say they even enjoy it.”   
If there was pain it was from Paula’s understanding of what had been missing from her life before, and how she’d never dreamed – never hoped to know it. She was a one-handed mouse, legally dead under her given name, now a simple schoolmarm under the second. As for the doctor – he was a terrifying prospect to all those who had knowledge of him…but as the children in her schoolhouse had pointed out, he looked no more terrifying than, well, a fictional holiday elf. The two of them had always been good at creating outward facades that caught their opponents unawares. But together, they were raw – noble veterans of a long war.   
During the week, she would teach. She’d move up and down the rows, and sometimes in the air she’d hear a faint whisper that made her cheeks burn. Paula worried that this meant the end of her employment. It was unheard of for a married woman to remain in the profession. However, no one ever came forward to demand that ‘Widow’ Schultz retire. She wondered at this good fortune, but then she had accompanied the doctor on visits over the bridge and into the bustling German neighborhood of the city. She saw the way he was regarded, and learned that –indeed, his reputation was not merely sequestered to the southern portions of the country. Dr. King Schultz’s frâu would not be forced into retirement as long as there were German families in her school.   
On Saturday and Sunday, there was target practice just outside the city limits. Through the cold afternoons, the doctor helped her to sharpen her skill set as a new ‘south paw shooter.’   
“It sounds like a name from one of your handbills,” she suggested glibly one day.  
He’d raised his eyebrows, giving her a wry look.   
“Let’s not go down that road again…”   
Paula finally came to realize that she was still a good shot. The ivory handled gun became an extension of her left hand in time, though the nonexistent right hand begged her brain to take over now and again.   
“No matter what, you’ll probably fight it for the rest of your life,” King explained one cold afternoon as she shot row after row of tin cans lined up along an abandoned stone wall just outside the city limits. She was adaptable, if nothing else. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d forced her mind to make her body do the seemingly impossible.   
No matter what King said, Paula still suspected that if she practiced, she might be as fast as him – though she’d never admit it outright. His superior ability to send hot lead into an opponent quicker than lightning was one of the things her doctor was fiercely proud of. It helped to know that he was proud of her, too.   
Paula hated thinking of him traveling back to the southlands without her, but knew that it would do no good to keep him with her in Ohio. He might’ve stayed if she’d insisted on it, but it would have made neither of them happy in the end. She had her family after all, and it wasn’t as if she couldn’t handle what was coming –although there were those that would condemn King for leaving her in Cincinnati. Especially in her newly minted ‘condition.’   
They’d spoken of that five weeks into 1854, when her inner-workings had ceased – frozen like the winter. He’d nearly left his profession then, but she had firmly resisted the idea.  
“I don’t expect you to give up your work. Remember? I promised you,” she said, while laying a gentle hand on the graying doctor’s shoulder.   
“Ah, but I worry. There can be no risking you now,” he’d insisted. She’d nodded, her eyes brimming a bit with salt and water. They’d worked it out – she wouldn’t be alone, and wouldn’t have been even if it weren’t for the new development. There would be letters, telegraphs, and – although she had never asked – a monthly cut of King’s earnings. He’d also put her into contact with another doctor – a general practitioner that he’d known back in the old country.   
“You’re safer here – with those two hellcats to guard you. No one in their right mind will come at you with Sarah by your side. But I will be back,” he assured her with a fond, lingering pat on her stomach. “I will always come back.”

 

Greenville, MI – April, 1859  
“Why we here, Schultz?”  
Django had known something was wrong with his partner when a man from the telegraph office had met them the afternoon before at their hotel room. The man had handed King a piece of thin yellow paper, and upon reading it, Schultz had gritted his teeth and pursed his lips.  
Now they stood on the platform of the Greenville train station. If watching the road around the slave market was bad, this wasn’t much better. Everything in the city stank, and seemed covered in mud. Django thought it was appropriate – a city like this should smell like shit.   
They were slated to meet the evil cuss who currently owned Hildy night after next at the Cleopatra Club. It was important that Django and his partner be practicing and perfecting their ‘act.’ They didn’t have time for whatever it was that was distracting the doctor, but Django had learned to never – well, nearly never – ask questions. Schultz was the only white man he could ever see trusting, and he’d earned it by trusting him, too. Whatever this was, the newly-minted bounty hunter was willing to let his mentor do what he needed to. But the train station?  
As if reading the younger man’s mind, Schultz turned on his heels towards Django. His brow was furrowed in worry, and except for occasionally checking his silver pocket watch, the doctor kept his hands clasp behind his back. He muttered German to himself occasionally. Despite the bits and snippets that Hildy had taught him, Django couldn’t quite pick up what Schultz was saying most of the time. Something about a ‘damned stubborn’ something or other.   
“Django, my boy. I need you to promise me…” Schultz looked full into Django’s face then, and paused. He couldn’t quite get something out.   
“You makin’ me kind of…suspicious,” Django finally muttered. ‘Suspicious’ was one of the new words he’d picked up from his partner, and he relished the chance to use it. He liked how Schultz used language like he used his guns – swiftly, and often to people’s unwitting surprise. No one expected a foreigner with a black man for a partner to speak better English than almost every else. It worked to their advantage, and Django knew enough about survival to understand what a good thing that was.   
Schultz gave Django a surprised look, then grinned a little. Of course, the doctor had known for a long time how incredibly bright his partner was. After the glow had lessened a bit, he cleared his throat, and put a hand on Django’s shoulder.  
“You must promise me that you’ll never speak a word about what you see here today. There are people who…might take advantage of what you’re going to learn. Do you recall the monthly visits? To the banks, I mean?”  
Django nodded. Schultz sent money to a fixed location once a month no matter where they were. Again, this wasn’t something he’d considered his business, and so he had never asked where exactly the doctor was shipping his cash, or to whom.   
“And…tell me again why we are in this godforsaken town, Django?”  
“You know why,” he insisted. “We gonna rescue my wife.”   
“So, you understand…keeping something you love safe.”  
The younger man raised his eyebrows, then went back to standing next to his partner. The puzzle was become more opaque instead of clearer, and suddenly Django was nervous too.   
At two thrity-seven, a train came barreling into the Greenville station. Immediately, the doctor took off his gray bowler and began smoothing out his hair which he’d had trimmed that morning.   
There were a few long moments of hustling and bustling while passengers skirted around the two men.  
Django spotted her before King did. It wasn’t because she was pretty – the woman was nothing like Hildy, though there was something notably striking about her that seemed…well…beautiful. She wore blue, and her hair looked as red as the splotches he and King left on the men their handbills led them to. It was then that he also realized that the woman was holding a little girl in her arms…and that her right arm was a truncated stump. He realized that his mouth was hanging open a bit, and he checked himself as the woman approached them.   
You could have knocked Django over with a feather when Schultz’ face lit up into a grin. The doctor reached towards both woman and child. He was not a big man, but his arms seemed to stretch just far enough to envelop them both.   
“Ah, Schatz – you shouldn’t have come. I do not want you seeing this place. I do not want her seeing this place,” he muttered, eyes closed and soaking in the embrace. After many moments, he let go.  
“I had to,” the woman said through a strained smile. “You didn’t sound like yourself in your last letter. You missed Christmas. I know…I know something is different. And Esther,” the woman handed Schultz the child. “Esther has grown so much!”   
“Mein liebling! Du bist sehr klug?”  
“Jah, Papa!” the little girl exclaimed with a grin. She couldn’t have been more than four years old, but her sparking brown eyes and nose looked familiar to Django. – they looked remarkably like Schultz’…but her hair was her mother’s. Copper pennies and blood. The hair unnerved him.  
He must’ve been staring – the woman turned to him after handing the child off to King, and offered him her left hand.   
“You’re Django – I’d recognize you anywhere. It’s nice to finally meet you, though I don’t feel like we’re quite strangers.”   
He stood there, too stunned to take the woman’s hand. He looked to Schultz who was prattling on with the little girl. The doctor glanced over at his partner, and grinned.   
“Django, it is fine – this is my wife Paula, and our Esther, of course.”   
Wife. Schultz had a wife. And a kid.   
What the hell?   
“Ma’am,” Django muttered as he took Paula’s hand.   
“You’re a talker, aren’t you?” Paula teased with a grin.  
He furrowed his brows, and gave her a steady stare. She took the conversation from there, much like Schultz often would. Paula talked about the train ride, the hot weather, Esther’s mood, and what things were like back home…in…in Ohio? Sometimes Schultz would interject or ask a question, but on a whole, the young bounty hunter was too agog to speak.   
His partner had a wife…just like him. But why hadn’t he said something before?   
Weeks later, when he and Hilde made the sad trip North to tell the redheaded woman about the doctor’s death, they would hear the rest of the story. It was only then that he would fully understand. But that was too far off in the future. It was wrapped in events that none of them could guess at on the train platform that afternoon.  
“We should head back to where young Django and I are staying. You’ll want to rest for the night,” Schultz took Paula’s remaining hand in both of his.   
“But Candie – you have work.”  
“That’s not for a couple of days, and we have things to speak about. I want to know everything.”  
Esther had begun circling Django by this point like a small red bird.   
“Wie heißt du?” she asked loudly.   
He bent down at the knee so that he could look at the little girl face to face, grinning despite himself.   
“I’m Django. I’m your daddy’s partner.”   
Paula let her eyes train on her daughter and the man she’d read about in so many letters for so many months. It was a near-ghastly inheritance Esther had, but at least there was this moment where they were all together.   
“Don’t worry, Schatz,” King’s voice brought her back, and he drew her close for a kiss.   
“There is time.”


End file.
